In a recent book, David Wolpe argues that David’s was the first fully explored and fleshed-out personality in human literature. Rather than follow the scholarly practice of trying to unravel and compare the different threads of the biblical narrative, Wolpe explores the psychology and meaning of this complex and compelling character. Indeed, writes Robin Russin, much of the power of the David narrative comes from its hero’s failings:

[O]ne of the arguments for the historical reality of David’s story is that he is portrayed as such a flawed, if charismatic, person. David soothes Saul’s troubled soul with his music at the same time that he has been chosen by Samuel to usurp Saul’s throne—because, essentially, David will be ruthless enough to utterly exterminate his opponents, where Saul was not. Indeed, as Wolpe notes (though disputes), many see “the stench of conspiracy” in David’s convenient absence from the battlefield where Saul and his son Jonathan are killed. The same David who earns—or simply inspires—the love and loyalty of his men steals the wife of one of his most faithful warriors and then, in order to cover his own guilt, sends the man off to die in the forefront of battle. The same David who is anointed to be the next king of all Israel later joins forces with Israel’s bitterest enemy when the need suits him. As Wolpe writes, “An unmixed motive does not seem to exist in David’s world, or in his heart.” The lesson seems to be that none of us is perfect—as God reminds David through the vehicle of the prophet Nathan, who “punctures in parable . . . not only David’s dormant conscience but his self-deceptions and rationalizations.” Even this most blessed of heroes, the chosen of God, is human, and afflicted—perhaps even more so—by the same moral faults and failures as the rest of us.

In 1946, Julius Streicher, a high-ranking SS-officer and a chief Nazi propagandist, was sentenced to death at Nuremberg. Just before he was executed, he called out “Heil Hitler!” and the odd phrase “Purimfest, 1946!” It seems the his hanging alongside that of his fellow convicts put him in mind of the hanging of Haman and his ten sons described in the book of Esther. As Emmanuel Bloch and Zvi Ron wrote in 2022:

Julius Streicher, . . . founder and editor-in-chief of the weekly German newspaper Der Stürmer (“The Stormer”), featured a lengthy report on March 1934: “The Night of the Murder: The Secret of the Jewish Holiday of Purim is Unveiled.” On the day after Kristallnacht (November 10, 1938), Streicher gave a speech to more than 100,000 people in Nuremberg in which he justified the violence against the Jews with the claim that the Jews had murdered 75,000 Persians in one night, and that the Germans would have the same fate if the Jews had been able to accomplish their plan to institute a new murderous “Purim” in Germany.

In 1940, the best-known Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda film, Der Ewige Jude (“The Eternal Jew”), took up the same theme. Hitler even identified himself with the villains of the Esther story in a radio broadcast speech on January 30, 1944, where he stated that if the Nazis were defeated, the Jews “could celebrate the destruction of Europe in a second triumphant Purim festival.”

As we’ll see below, Jews really did celebrate the Nazi defeat on a subsequent Purim, although it was far from a joyous one. But the Nazis weren’t the first ones to see in the story of Esther—in which, to prevent their extermination, the Jews get permission from the king to slay those who would have them killed—an archetypal tale of Jewish vengefulness and bloodlust. Martin Luther, an anti-Semite himself, was so disturbed by the book that he wished he could remove it from the Bible altogether, although he decided he had no authority to do so.

More recently, a few Jews have taken up a similar argument, seeing in the Purim story, and the figure of 75,000 enemies slain by Persian Jews, a tale of the evils of vengeance, and tying it directly to what they imagine is the cruelty and vengefulness of Israel’s war against Hamas. The implication is that what’s wrong with Israel is something that’s wrong with Judaism itself. Jonathan Tobin comments on three such articles:

This group is right in one sense. In much the same way as the Jews of ancient Persia, Israelis have answered Hamas’s attempt at Jewish genocide with a counterattack aimed at eradicating the terrorists. The Palestinian invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7 was a trailer for what they wished to do to the rest of Israel. Thanks to the courage of those who fought back, they failed in that attempt, even though 1,200 men, women and children were murdered, and 250 were kidnapped and dragged back into captivity in Gaza.

Those Jews who have fetishized the powerlessness that led to 2,000 years of Jewish suffering and persecution don’t merely smear Israel. They reject the whole concept of Jews choosing not to be victims and instead take control of their destiny.